


The Usual Unusual

by wolfraven80



Category: Sunless Skies
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21797185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfraven80/pseuds/wolfraven80
Summary: First of all, thank you so much for requesting this strange little game. I was so excited to get an excuse to revisit the Sunless Skies universe and take a stab at writing something for it. I tried to stick with the lore of the game as closely as possible but please forgive any slip-ups. I hope you'll enjoy a glimpse of another (ir)regular day on the Orphean. ;)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Usual Unusual

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallintosanity (yopumpkinhead)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yopumpkinhead/gifts).



> First of all, thank you so much for requesting this strange little game. I was so excited to get an excuse to revisit the Sunless Skies universe and take a stab at writing something for it. I tried to stick with the lore of the game as closely as possible but please forgive any slip-ups. I hope you'll enjoy a glimpse of another (ir)regular day on the Orphean. ;)

The captain halts in the cabin doorway as her aunt's appraising stare fixes her like one of the specimens they sometimes deliver to the Leadbeater & Stainrod Nature Reserve. The slightest arch of her aunt's eyebrow is enough to convey the depth of her disapproval. "Did you spend the night in a menagerie, dear?"

The captain brushes ineffectually at her clothes. "The cat somehow managed to get into my clothes chest. Everything is covered in cat hair. Even my knickers."

Her aunt's nose wrinkles. "Which cat? There are several."

"The useless one." The captain closes the door behind her and, careful not to upset a porcelain figurine of a girl being consumed by a monstrously ruffled dress, takes a seat in a lumpy armchair across from her aunt. She waits patiently as her aunt pours the tea and sets out the scones.

Teacup in hand, her aunt eyes her up and down again and sighs. "In my former line of work one could never allow onself to appear in such... disarray."

The captain's lips curl into a roguish smile. "Good thing I'm just a regular merchant then."

Her aunt peers at her over the top of her spectacles. "There are many words I would use to describe you, but 'regular' is not one of them."

"Adventurous then."

"Even so, your appearance should inspire respectability." She sips her tea. "I only say these things for you own good, my dear, since you're my favourite niece."

And the captain knows better than to try to respond to that. She waits until the tea is drained to the dregs and the scones are reduced to crumbs before she asks what she's come to find out. "So how did your tea with the crew go this morning? Anything I should know about?" She keeps her tone as neutral as possible, though her insides crawl.

"Just the usual," her aunt replies with utter nonchalance. As if the usual didn't include all matter of night terrors, phantom fears, and brushes with star-madness.

"There weren't more nightmares that usual? I mean after the incident the other day with the Scorn Fluke. And the... innards." Her own nightmares make a poor benchmark; they roll in and out like the waves of the Quiet Sea.

Her aunt tilts her head to one side. "I suspect some of your crew will never regain their stomach for meat. But no, the usual number of nightmares."

"Good then." The captain gives a nod and stands to leave.

"Though three of them did dream about clocks."

The captain freezes. "Clocks?"

"Yes, my dear. Clocks. The kind that tick."

The captain's brow furrows. She hasn't a clue what that could mean, but a shiver of fear slithers down her spine. The skies are wide and unforgiving, even here in Albion, and full of new ways to die.

She draws herself up and gives another nod to her aunt. No need for her to see the worry, the creeping terror of the skies that always threatens to seize one's heart and crush it. The captain's job is to appear composed. Always composed. "Perhaps we skirted a weft overnight. I'll keep an eye out. Thank you for you tea."

#

Diluted starlight bleeds through the stained glass panes of the port corridor, transmuted into tolerable shades of purple, green, and red. Even though the London smog is thick enough to drown out the starlight, once one ventures into the distant corners of Albion, the locomotive's stained glass panels are all that tames the stars' maddening luminescence. Pausing in the hallway, the captain can hear raucous laughter wafting from the mess hall. It will cease once she enters. Voices rise and fall in easy conversation.

"How do they expect me to clean the valves with those damn bloody demon cats stalking the engine room?" one voice asks. Another is in the midst of recounting an unfortunate encounter between a rubbery man and a debutante. And yet another is extolling the virtues of Worlebury's candy-floss.

When the captain glances down, she finds starlight shedding a purple-tinged glow onto her hand like a malignant bruise. She balls her hand into a fist and then stretches out her fingers. The light seems to cling to her skin. She gives herself a shake and steps through the doorway into the mess hall.

The laughter and idle chatter die.

A heartbeat, then two, three, and then it revives in a tremulous, half-life of its former cheer. In a faltering voice someone comments on the staleness of the fungal biscuits–much less stale than usual–and another begins an anecdote about discovering a hogshead of Starshine stuffed into the back of a linen closet at Langley Hall. It's only the group clustered around the Navigator whose cheer returns in earnest. The stiff collar of his shirt is open and his jacket unbuttoned. He leans back in his chair, looking as carefree as someone who has never stared into the great and empty expanse of the skies and seen the smallness of his soul.

The Navigator smiles as the captain approaches. "Take a seat, Captain. I'll deal you in. In fact..." he says, offering the deck up to her, "why don't you deal?

Poker. Seven card stud is the usual on the Orphean, though back in the Unterzee it was always whist and cribbage. She usually avoids playing cards with the crew but she's loathe to turn down an invitation from the Navigator. He's a boon to her uneasy crew, always bringing good cheer to wipe away the bright sheen of star-born terror gnawing at their insides. She slides into the empty seat next to the Navigator and across from crewman Peters, a lanky fellow with a spattering of a beard on his chin and Jennings, one of the longest-serving crewman, a young woman with close-cropped hair and several missing fingers.

As the captain begins to deal, she notices the crewmen seem distracted. Their eyes flit up to something behind her and then back down at the cards.

"It's happening again," Peters mutters as he peeks at his two hidden cards. He has a three of mirrors showing.

The captain glances up from her cards. "What's that?"

Jennings points at the hull behind the captain where a clock is mounted to the wall. Its face reveals it to be 6:23 in London–and thus everywhere else. "The time," Jennings says, and then she points to her cards. The captain frowns. All she can see of Jennings's cards is a two of mirrors.

Uncharacteristically serious, the Navigator is frowning down at the six of mirrors. Aside from the fact that three of them have received mirror suit cards this round, the captain sees nothing notable. A smile returns to the Navigator's face as he glances up. "Let's keep going for now and see what happens, shall we?"

The crewman grumble uneasy assent while the befuddled captain gives a curt nod.

No one bets.

The captain deals and the crewmen point and whisper as Jennings receives a three of anglers, the Navigator a two of anglers, and the captain a six of anglers. The betting seems forgotten as the Navigator urges the captain to keep dealing. Uncertain of what she's missing, the captain doles out four more cards. Peters and Jennings receive a king and a knave, which they ignore as the Navigator receives a three of bats and the captain a two of bats.

The captain frowns at the arrangement of twos and threes and sixes. "Once more," the Navigator says.

"You'll get the three of masks," Peters says grimly.

She does.

The others seem to have forgotten that a final seventh card has to be dealt to complete the hand because they are all turning up their hidden cards. It's then, when the hidden cards are revealed and visible against those dealt that the captain sees it.

Peters's hand is revealed to include the six of bats, the two of masks, and the three of mirrors. It's now clear that Jennings has the six of masks, the two of mirrors, and the three of anglers. The Navigator received the six of mirrors, the two of anglers, and the three of bats. And Captain now has the six of anglers, the two of bats, and the three of masks.

Jennings points to the clock once more. "We started the hand at six twenty-three."

Peters rubs at his arms as if afflicted with a sudden chill. "Been like that all evening. No matter who deals, the time shows up in the cards."

The Navigator offers the captain an apologetic smile. "We were hoping you might break the curse."

"I'm sorry I couldn't help. It's been happening all evening, you say?" The crewmen nod.

The Navigator shrugs. "Just the usual unusual happenings in the high wilderness."

"Indeed," Jennings agrees darkly.

"Thank God and Her Majesty for brandy," adds Peters.

The captain turns to the Navigator. "Why don't we head up the bridge and take another look at the charts? Maybe we should alter course. There could be something nearby causing... disturbances."

The Navigator cheerfully bids the crewmen good evening and follows the captain down the engine's hallways. Before she speaks, the captain waits until they're far enough from the mess hall that their voices won't carry. "I came to ask if you'd noticed anything peculiar today, but I suppose that answers that."

Up on the bridge, the captain takes command of the deck and has everyone double check their instruments while she peers through the scope and performs a sweep of the area. The steady thrum of the engines fills her ears, a hollow heartbeat in the high wilderness. "Nothing," she mutters and then turns to the crew. "Report."

The driver straightens his shoulders. "Steady course, full ahead, Captain."

A shivering crewman closes a porthole as the Diffident Bat, frost coating its fur like a white wool shawl, perches on his shoulder. "Our scout reports nothing close by."

The crewman manning the Speciometer frowns and then shakes her head. "Nothing from the instruments, Captain."

The Navigator shrugs. "I've reviewed the charts, Captain. This area should be empty. In fact–"

The rest of the sentence never reaches her ears.

***

The locomotive is the same, the Orphean that's been her home for so long now, but its mechanical heartbeat has been reduced to a stuttering whine. She is standing on the bridge, surrounded by pale faces, many of which she hasn't seen in ages. Many of which belong to the dead.

"Report," she croaks, dazed and uncertain.

"Systems heavily damaged, ma'am."

Another chimes in. "We've lost a fuel tank. Down to ten percent of reserves, ma'am."

She can hear the terror in their voices. Her skin feels warm, wet. She touches her temple and her fingers come away red. The fore of the bridge has been reduced to crumpled metal, tangled into impossible shapes like one of the polyhedric sculptures in the gardens of Piranesi. A crewman is bowed over a human form half covered in metal. The sound of wet, ragged breaths fills the gaps between the lurching thumps of the engine.

"The marauder is gone," a woman at the weapons station announces. "Target destroyed, ma'am."

The ragged breaths become laboured. Then halting. The engine stutters, like a failing heartbeat.

Her tongue moves of its own accord. "Resume course for New Winchester."

"Yes, ma'am," replies a woman at the helm.

The engine booms and then in the silence there is no more breathing. The crewman next to the body looks up, face as white as Lustrum's snowcaps, and shakes his head.

It's at that very moment that the ship's doctor appears on the bridge. "The captain is dead," he says without preamble.

She draws herself up, ready to object. She most certainly is not! But then her crew begin to murmur a name, one she hasn't heard spoken since...

"Captain Whitlock!" someone wails.

The doctor is standing next to her muttering something about the sigils burned into the captain's bones, about how they finally seared her from the inside out, how she ended in fire and ash.

Captain Whitlock is dead. _Amelia_ is dead.

The Orphean is limping away from the Blue Kingdom and she is not yet its captain. But she will be.

***

The present hits her like an awful hangover and it's all the captain can do to hang on to the tea and scones churning in her gut. Judging from the sounds coming from behind her, someone else isn't so lucky.

"So I suppose that wasn't just me," the Navigator says.

"You look cheerful," the captain says with a grimace.

"Apparently I'm going to be very lucky at cards next month." He flashes a grin and she can feel some of the fear in the room ooze away.

"Did we pass through a weft?" she asks.

"Negative, Captain. There's just... nothing out there."

She waits for the other crewman to make their reports. There is nothing. Nothing but the open skies and the thought-devouring light of the savage stars. Nothing is there.

But perhaps something is here.

She turns to the Navigator. "Hold the fort while I check on a few things."

"Aye, aye, Captain," he replies with a jaunty salute.

Some minutes later the captain has descended to the locomotive's bowels. Long before she reaches the engine room she can hear the steady chug of the engines and the footfalls approaching from the next corridor. Her chief engineer appears, escorted by Paimon, his grey fur immaculately groomed. The cat observes the captain with an unblinking stare that somehow manages to be so reproachful that, in spite of the urgency of the present circumstance, she finds herself painfully aware of the orange and white fur clinging to her pants and jacket.

"Captain," the Eccentric greets her. "I was just coming to see you. That wasn't a weft just now, was it? Those usually put a strain on the engine and I didn't notice a thing until suddenly I was wandering around the middle of next week."

The captain shakes her head. "No, there's nothing out there so..."

"It must be something on the locomotive," the Eccentric finishes with a nod. "A broken barrel of Hours?"

"We don't have any on board. Unless someone smuggled in some geodes in which case we'd have to search the entire locomotive."

The Eccentric's lips thin. Her brow furrows. "You may want to try the aft cargo hold first. I was in there this morning to fetch some spare parts and the oddest thing happened."

The captain's lips twitch. "Odder than being tossed into next week?"

"Truthfully yes. I was in there for at least half an hour and I suddenly realized there were no cats interfering in my work." Paimon yowls long and low. His disapproval echoes between the metallic walls of the hull. The Eccentric frowns down at the cat then look back at the captain. "There's something in there they don't like."

Something in there.

The captain decides instantly. "I'll round up a couple of crewmen to help. You get some crowbars and I'll meet you in the hold."

#

Open all the crates, she tells them. Check every one. Look for anything unusual, anything out of place. And then they go at it with the crowbars, checking all the cargo that had been so carefully packed and systematically arranged in the hold. She leaves the crewmen to unpack the crates of dried tea and nostalgic crockery while she and the Eccentric check the casks of Navaratine gemstones. It's not that the captain doesn't trust her crew but she knows how temptation can settle in like a head cold: just a tickle at first at the back of the throat that slowly becomes a raw ache whenever you breathe, until it fills you up and you can barely breathe at all.

One of the crewman, Baker, is the newest addition to the locomotive. A replacement for Coleman who was last seen on shore leave at Langley Hall. "Why's there so much china?" he asks his crewmate, Dawson, as he holds up a plate bearing the face of Her Renewed Majesty.

"Always good to have on hand when you go to Worlebury and it's in high demand at Langly Hall," Dawson replies, her tone clipped as if the new crewman ought already to know this. "How do you think the captain pays your wages?"

She notices the Eccentric's lips twitch. The captain raises an eyebrow in response and her chief engineer chuckles. It's as if here, hidden away from her cats, she is free to be the person she had striven to make herself. What would she be if she could shear off their presence as she has shorn off the pieces of her former self in Piranesi?

The captain raises her crowbar to pry off the lid of another cask when time slants away from her.

***

This time she's less alarmed. Of course this time she finds herself somewhere much less alarming. She's sitting in a lumpy armchair and her aunt is enumerating a list of items they absolutely must add to the locomotive's manifest the next time they're in London. It is, word for word, the same list the captain sat through a mere hour and a half ago. There is a half-eaten scone on a side table and a cup of tea, still warm, in her hand. The captain sips her tea and listens, as patient as a clay man.

***

Her return to the present is swift and painless. That seems not to be the case for Dawson. The plate she was holding smashes on the floor as she flings her hands up to covers her ears and begins screaming about bees and a hymn that won't stop. She tears out of the cargo hold, shrieking like a Scribe Spinster. Crowbar still in hand, the new crewman stands there dazed until the captain urges him to go after Dawson.

For some moments the captain stares at the crowbar in her hand. She could smash every plate, every pane of glass, every gourd of Chorister nectar. She could break them all to pieces until she smashed the thing that was tossing them about in time, like so many rolled dice.

"Captain?"

She looks up to find the Eccentric peering at her with evident concern. The captain averts her eyes. "Let's finish this, shall we? While we still have a hold on our sanity."

They unpack more crates and casks and find nothing. The crewmen still haven't returned by the time they come to a case destined for the Royal Society. She's carried freight for them before, usually pieces of armament destined for London's dreadnoughts. At other ports she picks up crates of spare parts and supplies for use in their engineering experiments. The box they picked up in Worlebury is smaller than the usual but had the regular commission attached. They won't like having their materials broken into but losing her locomotive would be worse than losing the delivery fee so she hefts the crowbar and gets to work.

As they lever the lid off the crate, the engineer peers in, her face lighting up at the assortment of mechanisms and unfathomable devices. The captain gently lifts out a pair of pistons. The Eccentric oohs as she spots a gasket. "It's a three-point-oh-one. Really rare size."

The captain can't even recognize the items beneath that, though the Eccentric does immediately. "Experimental mileometer," she notes for one and, "Helix coupling," for another, though she shakes her head and mutters something about inefficient designs.

Finally there is only one mechanism left tucked into the back of the crate, a circular plate of metal with a cloudy sphere in its centre. The captain frowns as she notices the sigils engraved into its surface. The sigils seems to shift and squirm under her gaze. She squints at them and as they slither around the metal plate she becomes aware of a faint, rhythmic clicking sound.

As the sigils move and the clicking ticks by, the captain finds herself trying to remember the day of the week. Is it still March? Or April 1906. No, 1907?

The captain wrenches her gaze away from the mechanism. "It shouldn't be in there. It shouldn't be on my locomotive."

Head tilted, a look of concentration on her features, the Eccentric only nods.

"We need to get rid of it," the captain says. The Eccentric reaches out. Her fingers brush the surface of the disc.

Nothing happens.

"Some sort of artifact. It's awfully heavy." She looks up at the captain. "I'm assuming it wasn't mentioned in the manifest?" The captain shakes her head. "Well, you do have enemies in Worlebury."

"You think the cult smuggled it into the shipment?"

"It's a possibility."

The captain lets out a slow, deliberate breath and then grasps the artifact. Her arms strain to lift it; it weighs far more than its size would suggest and seems to tug at her with its own gravity. The Eccentric grasps the other side of the disc and together they manage to heave it out of the crate.

"Let's get to the nearest hatch and toss it." Whatever it is, it can bloody well bend time to its will out in the cold emptiness of the skies.

Together they stagger over the open crates and out of the hold. The nearest hatch is a few corridors over. The ticking grows louder with every step until the captain can feel it vibrating through her teeth, in her skull, behind her eyes. Tick. Tick. Tick.

She looks down at the artifact. The cloudy sphere at its centre pulses to life; the sigils glow orange. And then–

***

The world is fire. She is engulfed in a sea of flames. She is drowning in it, boiled alive like a shellfish to be served for a luncheon. She can feel her flesh searing, shearing away from her bones. She is baked. Broiled. Consumed.

Her lungs gasp in another fiery breath and it begins again. Every lungful another death by drowning, drowning in fire. The Unterzee itself is roiling, its heat like the searing touch of the sun.

Her lungs shudder and she is forced to take a breath.

The world is fire.

***

Someone is screaming. Someone else is calling for her, calling for the captain. She feels a hand on her cheek. It is cold against the burning heat of her skin.

She clamps her jaws shut and the screaming stops abruptly.

"Captain." The Eccentric's voice is cool, calm, a balm to the captain's charred thoughts.

She takes a ragged breath. She opens her eyes. The Eccentric is crouched over her, looking worried. The captain blinks, her mind sluggishly trying to understand the geometry of her position. Ah. She's on the floor, flat on her back, the churn of the locomotive's steady flight rumbling through the deck plates and rattling her ribs. She's on the Orphean.

As the captain moves to sit up, the Eccentric reaches out to assist her. "Are you all right, captain?"

"I went somewhere... unpleasant."

The Eccentric quirks an eyebrow. "I gathered that."

She still feels feverish, still engulfed by her burning memory. The captain sighs and lifts the corner of her shirt to reveal the livid scars on her ribs and back, the seared and melted skin. "It was years ago," she says, "during a stint on one of the steamships we used to travel the Unterzee. I was in the boiler room when the ship was rammed by an Angler Crab–one of the huge Elder ones. A pipe ripped open and I was scalded with steam. Then infection set into the burns. I spent days dreaming of flames. A boiling ocean. Drowning in fire."

"You seem to have an endless supply of these tales of terror, Captain."

The captain huffs. "Don't we all?"

"We could put you in a sky suit and have you take a stroll across the outside hull. That would cool you down right quick," the Eccentric suggests, her lips curved into a tiny smile.

The captain's lips twitch. "I don't think that will be necessary. I just need a moment." She takes a few deep breaths. There are no flames here, no fire.

"What was it like, sailing on the Unterzee?"

For a beat the captain considers her engineer. The lean, diligent Eccentric wasn't born in the Neath, has never seen the Unterzee. She did not come through the Avid Horizon like the rest of them. While they were crossing to this new world, she was within the maze of Piranesi, making herself anew. "It was..." the captain begins, grasping at words that seem as distant as that old world is now, "much like flying through the Stygian Expanse–endless, liquid darkness. Except you could always hear the water lapping against the hull." She pauses then and looks up into the Eccentric's eyes, eyes that are new, that looked on the world for the first time the day she signed on with the Orphean. "I miss the sound of the waves."

The Eccentric nods slowly. Then she holds out a hand to the captain who grasps it and lets the Eccentric help her up.

On the floor, the artifact is tick-tocking softly. The captain's innards churn at the thought of touching it again. The Eccentric seems to notice for she grasps the metallic ring firmly and gives the captain her best smile. "Almost there, Captain."

The captain swallows down the bile in her throat and wraps her fingers around the metal ring. She lifts, feels its weight bearing down on her like the sun's judgment, and with the Eccentric's help, staggers on towards the nearest hatch.

By the time they reach the hatch the captain's muscles are burning, her arms trembling. The hatch is stiff, reluctant to let in the cold and the starlight. It groans in protest as the captain shoves it open. After the burning dreams the captain is grateful for the frigid wind that bites her exposed skin and sinks into her, gnawing at her bones like a famished beast. The starlight is harsh; it beckons her like a silver-white blade.

When the captain glances down, the sigils on the artifact seem to be growing brighter again. With a final spurt of energy, she hurls the artifact out into the skies and pulls the hatch closed against the artifact and the maddening starlight and the hungry cold.

For a minute she leans against the door panting with the exertion. When she glances over at her engineer, she find the Eccentric's gaze is distant as if she were wandering her thoughts as she once wandered Piranesi. "I'm sorry we couldn't use the device to repel the cats," she offers.

The Eccentric's eyes refocus and she turns to smile at the captain. "It's quite all right. There's going to be another way to be rid of them."

The captain quirks an eyebrow. "You seem awfully certain of that all of a sudden."

"When time went haywire earlier... All at once I was on the grounds of the Royal Society. You were there with a packed lunch." A slow smile curls her lips. "And there were _no cats_."

The captain wrinkles her nose. "Just my luck. I got to relive fever dreams and you got to have a picnic."

The Eccentric shrugs. "Sorry, Captain."

"I suppose it wouldn't be a regular day in the skies if something untoward weren't happening." Letting out a long breath, the captain straightens her shoulders and prepares to return to her more regular duties. "I need to head the bridge to tell them we're clear. Could you let the other engineers know?"

"Of course."

"Oh and... spread the word that everyone gets an extra ration of brandy." The Eccentric's lips twitch but she manages to keep an _almost_ straight face as she gives a curt nod. "And thank you for your help."

The Eccentric shakes her head. "No, Captain, thank _you_."

And for the first time, the captain senses real optimism instead of the quiet resignation she's become accustomed to in her engineer. Every day in the high wilderness seems to bring with it some new form of terror, some new nightmare; it's become the norm for her and her crew. But some days she's still surprised. The skies are wide and cold but it seems that every once in a while they dole out gifts along with curses.

**The End**


End file.
